The local paper, the King City Rustler, has been printing large glossy photos of some man in a tan jacket holding a deerskin suitcase. They have not been printing anything else. No one knows who he is, and no one can remember the photos after they look at them.

These glossy, color photos seem expensive to print. This is a waste of the newspaper’s funds, everyone thought, but no one said.

When reached for comment by an angry mob of King City citizens bearing torches, the editor of the Rustler hid.

Those outside of King City are saying that it is getting harder and harder to find the town, like it is slowly sliding off the map. Roads that used to go into town do not go into town anymore. And those attempting to reach town simply disappear.

“I’m pretty sure we didn’t used to disappear in King City,” said Wanda Nieves, a local resident who issued her own press release, consisting only of that quote.

We at the Night Vale Daily Journal are using the massive amount of funds gained in the ever-lucrative newspaper business to investigate why people from King City are sending us annoying press releases and also, if it comes up, why King City is slipping out of our reality under the watchful eyes of a mysterious man in a tan jacket.

As always, this article contains additional reporting by agents of various unnamed government agencies, who add and subtract words and sentences from newspaper articles in order to send coded messages to compatriots living deep undercover in distant parts of the world.

Directly after that was another article, with the same layout and the same photo illustration, a self-shot portrait of Leann Hart that she was apparently quite pleased with and so had, for much of 2003–2004, used as illustration for most of her feature stories.

KING CITY TOTALLY FINE AND BASICALLY

NOT THAT INTERESTING

JANUARY 23, 2003

BY LEANN HART

Senior Political Reporter

A city in central California with no apparent connections to our town of Night Vale or the vast, flat desert in which we reside is totally fine. It has a population of about [a brown smudge] and an unemployment rate of [scribbled out with pencil].

The sun shines there, much as it does here. Sometimes the sun does not shine, and people there refer to this as night. In this respect, and in all others, it is totally normal.

We at the Daily Journal are not clear why we are reporting on this story, as the fact that King City exists is not in and of itself an interesting fact. If truth be told, and it often shouldn’t be, the town itself is not interesting.

Good mayor.

Citizens of King City, when asked via phone, wanted first to know who was calling.

“Oh, I’m a reporter,” I said. “I was just checking to see if you had anything to say.”